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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - (2023)
I guess it's fair to say you have to do a fair bit of suspending disbelief with Indiana Jones and everything which comes with that particular franchise - more so as he approaches extreme old age, although I have to admit that Harrison Ford looks good for however old he is in this. For me, this movie was the proverbial mixed bag - a bag filled with candy, some sweet and delicious, and some I have to psychologically spit out. I'm a lover of
Raiders of the Lost Ark, and
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. After that, the franchise became cartoonish - including
Last Crusade. This extraordinarily belated adventure has both moments of intense nostalgia, and action payoffs that actually work. It also has it's fair number of moments which didn't sit so well with me. I'm not going to go into any detail, because I'm sure most people who are looking forward to it want to be surprised about where it goes and what happens. All I can say is that the climax really worked for me - and although the rest of the film is middling at best, that crazy last act was perhaps the best in the series since
Raiders. A bit of a shame the rest of the film didn't match it. Enjoyed watching it nevertheless, which is more than I can say for
Crystal Skull as far as my memory serves.
6/10
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Mermaids - (1990)
In 1990 I was of an age to be completely plugged in to all the music videos going around at the time - no matter if I liked them or not, I'd watch the countdown. As such, I probably saw the video to Cher's "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)" six million times, and despite that (or perhaps because of it) I never saw
Mermaids - until now. Richard Benjamin is a very middle-of-the-road director in my eyes, and this is a drama which befits his status. He was a replacement of a replacement to a film that was going to be much darker. A mother (played by Cher) and her two daughters (played by Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci) move to a new town. All three are eccentric in their own way, and Cher's character, Rachel, who often moves them around, meets Lou Landsky (Bob Hoskins), who will have a hard time convincing her to commit to him. Meanwhile, Charlotte (Ryder) becomes zealous about religion and a local, good looking guy, Joe (Michael Schoeffling) despite the whole "she's only a schoolgirl" thing, which isn't really brought up in the film, surprisingly. Anyway, it's okay but I doubt I'll ever go back to see it again, or recommend it too strongly - though Ryder has many really funny moments. Sometimes a movie has bad things that happen - called drama - and sometimes studios balk at the idea of presenting the audience with anything challenging or troublesome, which is when they'll excise the drama and
Mermaids is what we're left with.
6/10